Once more I watched ’The Road Home’ because of being crazy for Zhang Zhi…what a girl still looking teen at her 29 after her outstanding multifaceted performance as the beautiful, young girl warrior in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". Zhang appears in’The Road Home’ as an idyllic rural teenager in 1950s, her innocence displayed in the martial arts spectacular is not present either.
Remember Zhi fought for hair comb in’Crouching Tiger…’that comb sprinkled love between two, There is a’hairpin’ gift in’The Road Home’
’The Road Home’(literally translated from the Chinese title’My Father and Mother’) is a simple movie about love and devotion, film is chaste appear to romance without embrace, touch and kiss. The movie framed in two eras with flashback in color and present is shown in black & white, might be in director’s view black & white scenes are inherent colder due to its winter setting season with the grey and resembling bluish color.
Story goes like this way: The district chief called Yusheng a business man to tell him that his father died suddenly, he returns to his parental village to accompany aged mother and bury his father. The mother adamantly refuse to bring coffin by an easier means of transport, she obstinate that her husband’s funeral will follow old local customs, she will personally weave the funeral cloth on the village loom, and local men must carry the coffin from many miles through the winter snows to the village(this means’The Road Home’) so that her husband’s spirit will remember its way home. Yusheng runs into a photo of his father, and mother taken him in 1950s time when they first met, this prompts a flashback for the son. His mother Zhang Ziyi was 18 year considered the most beautiful girl living with her blind widowed mother. Village men build a new schoolhouse, and Zhang was nominated to weave the traditional red cloth to be wound around the school rafters, she set her sights on the handsome 20 year schoolteacher(Zheng Hao), Hao also makes eye contact with the girl in the bright red jacket. There were poor people and they don’t have much of a salary for a school teacher so it is the duty of each family in town to take turns hosting the teacher for dinner everyday. Ziyi became infatuated with him and he with her and this infatuation gives way to devotion. It’s a sweet and honest portrait of some one who fall in love, Ziyi anticipating the date when Hao will have dinner at her house. Unfortunately the teacher was called back to the government to face interrogation for unspecified political reason probably because he was believed as a’Rightist’ by the new communist party.
Ziyi lost her heart and fell gravely ill, villagers thought she would die. However, upon hearing the news, the teacher was able to come back to the village, Ziyi, welcomed the sight of her beloved in tears, Hao gives a hairpin as small gift and promised he will come back as soon as possible.
Again, for a few additional year the teacher was kept away from Zhang as punishment for having a visit to the village without permission, and since Ziyi, who has pinned all her hopes on his return, nearly dies from gravely ill waiting by the road for him to return on the day he promised.
There was heavy snowstorm on the day of the casket arrives, more than hundred of village former pupils turn up to carry his coffin, and none of them accept payment. The coffin is laid to rest near the old well, overlooking the schoolhouse.
Much of the film is set during the winter in a perfect, hilly region of northern China that is connected to the outside world by a single unpaved road. There is no electricity in the town, and water is pumped from the wells… most amazing in movie is the present is shown in black and white and the flashback is shown in color because the season changes in correlation with the story in spring and summer the love blooms and grows, while in fall of winter the love becomes despairing.
Plagiarized theme: Plagiarized the theme from’Brave Heart’ cinematographer Yong Hou’s black and white images are artful
Director Zhang Yimou’s The Road Home is considered a lesser effort compare to some of his great movie like’Raise the Red Lantern’, it’s not a perfect motion picture, but nicely appreciated love story, well developed romance without touch and kiss. Very little dialogue is used in the central flashback, where images speak and non-prominent narration fills in the story.